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The KDA has so far issued 300 directives to different administration agencies to ensure that official correspondence between the citizens and the state is in Kannada.

The move received a thumbs-up from major political parties, but the BJP has sought relaxation for a cosmopolitan Bengaluru. "The objective behind the move - to encourage use of Kannada - is laudable, but Bengalureans must get an option of filling forms in English too," said Rajajinagar MLA and BJP spokesperson Suresh Kumar.

JD(S) MLA YSV Datta welcomed the KDA decision and said availing state benefits must be linked to learning of Kannada, and "this might encourage people to learn the language".

For the full text of the report in the ToI, click here.

Perhaps this matter keeps getting raked up whenever somebody takes over the Chairpersonship anew, though, quite as Sri Suresh Kumar, who has served as a senior minister, understands and appreciates, there are limitations to taking the matter too far. Well, quite as Sri YSV Datta has stated, availing state benefits can perhaps be linked to learning Kannada.
 
Art and culture can do a far more effective job of 'protsahana' (term used by the famed singer, Raghu Dixit - check here) of the language, if the intent of the government is genuine, rather than any of these kinds of impositions, which can only back-fire.

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Everytime i read language related topics on praja.in or anywhere else i shake my head. Will the govt. stay out this language business please!!!!! For heavens sake let them do their primary job of maintaining law and order and give a conducive environment for citizens, businesses etc. to function efficiently and peacfully. They have enough work to do to in terms of providing better infrastructure.

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Dear Murali Garu,

Great that you picked up this vital news item and have brought it to Praja forum for discussion. I am all for universalisation of English as  the primary link language with Hindi and / or mother tongue being a close second in terms of widening one's knowledge base.

Have you noticed how Namma CM is unable to answer extempore, questions put to him in English?  He gets answers written down in English and reads them out over the mike. Looks so pathetic that the head of a State Government cannot even put together one coherent sentence when asked a question by a scibe - does it not?

In this day and age of NDTV / Times Now etc which is watched by most middle and upper class urban citizens, ability to speak, write and read in English is almost a necessity.

Incidentally, defending primacy to English does in no way belittle mother tongue. Only those who are insecure of their mother tongue begin to think so.

My two penny worth

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 Professor David Crystal has written in the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English language that When 300 million Indians speak a word in a certain way that will be the way to speak it. It is felt that by 2010 India will have the world’s largest number of English (Hinglish?) speakers. The TOI angle seems to high light the Dalit’s late awakening. In fact it is perhaps the late awakening of our politicians too. This breed of politicians is marked for extinction. 

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If you love Hindutva, you gotta live with it and all its cultural baggage. All right, enough background. Now for some proper advice. There is one very easy way for Patels to get white-collar jobs. You need to leave Gujarat and go to a place that is called ‘India’. You should visit it. It has cities like ‘Bangalore’ and ‘Mumbai’ and ‘Gurgaon’ and ‘Noida’ and ‘Chennai’ and ‘Hyderabad’. In these places people, including the children of servants and drivers, have been entering the middle class through white-collar jobs in the last decade. There is not as much whining about reservations by the urban middle class in these cities any longer. Want to know why? English.

For the full text of the column by Aakar Patel in the Sunday ToI, click here.

Nothing more need be said. Unfortunately, 'Namma governmentu' seems hell bent on squandering away the advantage by imposing all kinds of restrictions on private schools, even as it does not have, and cannot build, requisite capacity to meet the multiplying demand. Nobody has an issue with promotion of Kannada; in fact, everybody is for it. But, should it be at the cost of English, as essential element to furthering career mobility?

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